Snow was going to be some kind of Balthier meets Seifer type lovable douchebag.

Seifer? ...yeah no.

I don't have anything against him but I've never found him particularly remarkable outside of his role in VIII.

Oh, I didn't actually like Seifer in either ffviii or kingdom hearts. Dude was insufferable.But I do think that kind of character could be cool. JRPGs could stand to have less goody-two-shoes characters, and I would have liked it if Snow was somewhat better at sticking up for himself when faced with Lightning's bullshit.

I was thinking more of the visual homages in the design with the grey trench coat, type of posture etc. Somehow I got the feeling Snow was going to be more of the super smug dick-ish character that fucks the main characters girl friend behind his back similar to Seifer.

for the longest time i hated sazh because he's a black dude that keeps running away from conflict.

Sazh did the opposite considering that he really went through all the stuff he did in XIII because of his son becoming a l'Cie. If anything Vanille was the one that was running away from conflict and her own problems.

for the longest time i hated sazh because he's a black dude that keeps running away from conflict.

Sazh did the opposite considering that he really went through all the stuff he did in XIII because of his son becoming a l'Cie. If anything Vanille was the one that was running away from conflict and her own problems.

I know. My biggest, beefiest looking party member... throws a ball at people. And it can do more damage than slicing someone's abdomen with a sword. >.<

I love fantasy rpgism, but when you're going for a level of realism in design and plot at least stick with it. Sword strike doing more harm than a bullet? It can, assuming you dodge the rain of bullets to get the strike in. Ultima outdamaging a gun? Makes sense. Nunchucks? Sure. A staff? Why not. Attack with a volleyball? NO.

Hey man, can you imagine how painful those welts would be? He probably lets a little bit of the air out before he hits you for that extra sting.

The one thing I hated about this game was how tutorial-heavy it was. Tutorials 30 hours into the game, noooo.

All tutorials on how to press "X" over and over for 30 hours.

Did you play Enchanted Arms? That one was the best.... literally everything they gave you a tutorial for was to press X, and to make it "in game" so it doesn't take you out of the action it was all character slowly explaining things like how to open doors and press buttons (all with X) to your main character. I immediately hated my main character in that game before the store even got rolling, because he was clearly an established idiot. .... and then the story just reinforced that.

Couldn't you skip all or most of the tutorials though? I don't remember right now.

Not in FFXIII. Although not because of the game showing the info down your throat like a modern day Zelda game (I mean it was just a single goddamn popup box in most cases), but because whatever function that the tutorial details is completely locked down until you hit said tutorial 10~30+ hours down the line (like say, managing your paradigms, changing your party members around, or choosing a team leader; the latter two functions used, not only by every other RPG with a party system, but either allowed anywhere from the very start to within 5 hours depending on how fast you get party members and how big the active party is, and the other is a straight up major gameplay mechanic that otherwise would've left players mashing auto battle for the entirety of the game without it). Seriously, by the time you finally get the last of your 'basic' tools, you're just about to throw down with Space Pope/RoboGod for the first of several times (which is then followed up by an incredibly obnoxious dungeon then Planet Namek/The Land Down Under/Australia/the game's Calm Lands/The Training Montage Zone (even Space Pope/Robo God describes it as this)), and then you only really have two valid party loadouts since the game is only balanced around those two particular loadouts and every other one leaves some kind of crippling gap in roles.

Also because some tutorials were on things like the weather system seen and used within the entirety of that one and only area in the entire game (which is, of course part of the reason why they recycled the hell out of it in FFXIII-2 (among all the other shit recycled for XIII-2)), and the chocobo herding (again to be used for the entirety of one room).

^For all the bitching and moaning that there has been about the tutorials in XIII I thought that they well handle properly unlike with the experience I had in VIII where the tutorials for me there were info dumps that stopped the flow of the game for a while and also I think that a group of players were left disoriented at first with the amount of info the game just throws at you to get out of the way.

^For all the bitching and moaning that there has been about the tutorials in XIII I thought that they well handle properly unlike with the experience I had in VIII where the tutorials for me there were info dumps that stopped the flow of the game for a while and also I think that a group of players were left disoriented at first with the amount of info the game just throws at you to get out of the way.

Right. But FFVIII was trying to help you decode its needlessly obtuse equipment management system and numbers porn or to tell you stuff like Squall can literally be made to critical hit 100% of the time. Once you figure out that the radical changes they made to the JRPG formula amounted to treating your summons and spells as equipable items to maximize your numbers and abilities the rest just fell into place.

In contrast FFXIII tutorials only ever amounted to "You can flip switches to do things.", or "Do this to get through the next area.", or "You are now allowed to organize your party.", mostly the middle, and the last of which only shows up at the end of chapter 9 of 13. FFVIII teaches you how to organize your party before you leave Balmb Garden for the very first time (or enter into the Fire Cave; I forget because its one of the most pedestrian mechanics in a JRPG) whereas FFXIII-1 has you, the player, literally bound and gagged for almost the entire game, only ever so slowly and rigidly are you fed rope to gain a slight amount of wriggle room over the majority of the game until finally, 2/3rds of the way through the game, you now have the same amount of options as a JRPG just after leaving the charred remains of the main characters home village. Hell, you can't even level up freely as you're given a hard cap on your Crystarium for each phase of the game, only finally fully relenting after you have beaten the game and seen the ending and its time to grind on post game crap for reasons.

There's a reason why this game rates your performance on a battle by battle basis. And that's because its rating you on how well you can follow directions (if you don't pay attention to those tutorials, then your going to spend a quarter of an hour on a single fight and get zero stars, if you obey the tutorial to the letter, you'll be done in a minute with 5 full stars). At absolutely no point in the game does it ever encourage or allow experimentation on the players' end (at least, not without penalty for your failure to obey).

And this is why I do not like Final Fantasy Thirteen One. Not because the plot is a joke, or the characters are made of cardboard, or all that grand world building is tucked away in a fucking datalog (even though all that's true), but because the game is fucking playing you like a cheap kazoo.

And this is why I do not like Final Fantasy Thirteen One. Not because the plot is a joke, or the characters are made of cardboard, or all that grand world building is tucked away in a fucking datalog (even though all that's true), but because the game is fucking playing you like a cheap kazoo.

I think I'm sensing some resentment. I agree with what you are saying, but I guess I don't mind being played like a kazoo. In FFXIII at least, some games it bothers me.I liked the way the game was set up even if it could have been paced better. You the player had to figure out how to deal with each encounter like a mini-puzzle where each encounter taught you little-by-little how to play the game. You also could experiment at the end of the game if you wanted to. My party for everything from Australia to the last boss was Sazh/Snow/Fang. It wasn't optimal, but I just had to figure out how to maximize damage to kill things before I died.